Nearly every Friday morning for the last few months, I virtually get together with a team of fellow Poynter reporters to talk about the way the pandemic changed journalism. Amaris Castillo, Angela Fu and I launched a series documenting layoffs and career changes caused by the coronavirus. When Jaden Edison joined Poynter for an internship, he also joined us in reporting for Some Personal News.
In one meeting, we were talking about stories we’d heard and people we planned to talk to, and Edison shared the person he hoped to feature next — Stacy-Marie Ishmael. Earlier this year, she and colleague Millie Tran announced they were leaving The Texas Tribune at the same time. Ishmael tweeted:
So: I’m taking a break. I’m stepping down from @TexasTribune, where I’ve spent the last year operating at a relentless and breakneck pace to ensure that our journalism could rise to the demands of this moment.
It did. We did. And in the process, I *totally* burned out.
Edison wanted to know what her days were like now, how she felt, and how we should all be thinking about our health and the sustainability of this work.
You can read his story, which published today, at Poynter. I wanted to know what Edison — 22 and about to start grad school for investigative journalism at Columbia University — learned from that story and this summer.
“I think now, talking to SMI and seeing Simone Biles, I just view mental health differently,” he said.
Something he’s thinking a lot about now — what journalism asks of us.
“We eat and breathe journalism,” he said. “There’s no room to be who you are as a person.”
For young journalists, programs like the one he’s about to begin build off the mentality that you’re going to be run into the ground, he said. They try to prepare you for it. But even at 22, Edison told me he knows many of the places journalists give their hearts and souls to won’t reciprocate.
I want to pause here and say — before you email me and remind me that this is the way it’s always been and everyone just needs to toughen up — we can do better. Some newsrooms already are. Edison talked about how The 19th* posts salaries with job descriptions, offers 20 days of paid time off and up to six months of parental leave.
He knows, very soon, he’ll be looking for the kind of place he wants to work. And as a young Black man, he knows there will be few stories he’s not in some way personally connected to. Edison wants to work for people who understand why that matters.
“I think the best newsrooms and the best leaders are the people who listen to the people who work for them,” he said. “I definitely want to be in a space where my voice is valued.”
You can find resources, training and research on journalism and mental health from the Carter Center.
And thank you, Jaden. If you’re reading this, stop and go enjoy every second of your time off. Remember how it feels, how it makes you better, and never give up the space you deserve.
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